


Set

by aderyn



Series: Natural Facts [22]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Gen, TRF, flying and falling, goddesses and bloggers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-28
Updated: 2012-04-28
Packaged: 2017-11-04 12:04:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 252
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/393646
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aderyn/pseuds/aderyn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock was in love with a woman once, but she wasn’t human.</p>
<p>Well of course the ceremony of innocence is drowned...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Set

_“Ascend and descend; descend with Nephthys, sink into darkness with the Night-bark. Ascend and descend; ascend with Isis, rise with the Day-bark."—from the ancient Egyptian pyramid texts_

 

**Bird**

Sherlock was in love with a woman once, but she wasn’t human. She was a dark-phase gyrefalcon named Nephthys. (for the goddess-companion of the war-like Set; oh, she was a beauty; he was thirteen; she stole him from his books.)

A family friend, a falconer, let Sherlock hold her, blinkered and jessed, on his wrist. Let him watch as he worked her in a field, climbing and circling, waiting on the prey, falling, let him hold her with the hood off, her eyes still wild.

She had blades in her gaze, that bird, and if he’d understood what it meant (he was thirteen), he would have offered her his beating heart.

*******

**Bart’s**

It’s cold up there, and he’s sick with secrets, sick with his secret battlefield, and he thinks ,madly, spinning and pacing, locked on Moriarty’s face just before he ends it,“well of course the ceremony of innocence is drowned.” (He might have thought that by the pool too; he’s never really deleted that line.)

Blood spreads on the rooftop.

At thirteen he loved a goddess.

Now he loves his work, his city, and his blogger (heart bound with a halter hitch), and he has to leave them; he has to fall, and he thinks of her just before he does, that bird, thinks of her falling from above, and John below.

 

**Author's Note:**

> The goddess Nephthys is the sister of Isis and companion of the war-like deity Set, a protective goddess who symbolizes the death experience just as Isis represents rebirth. Nephthys is sometimes depicted as a kite, or as a woman with falcon wings. She is also the protector of the sacred Phoenix or Bennu bird.
> 
>  
> 
> "Turning and turning in the widening gyre  
> The falcon cannot hear the falconer;  
> Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;  
> Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,  
> The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere  
> The ceremony of innocence is drowned..."--W.B. Yeats, "The Second Coming"


End file.
